Mover Mike

Bird Flu - The Rodents! Maxedoutmama has been following the Avian Flu closely for some time. Her latest post on the subject is a chiller! Her message is one the Boy Scouts have promoted for many years, "Be Prepared!" Bleach, and soap and water go a long way toward staying healthy.

Bird flu Avian H5N1 pandemic Mover Mike

This come under the title of Yeah, Right! China to vaccinate 14 Billion poultry They claim to be producing 100,000,000 doses a day. If they could vacinate one chicken each second, that is equal to approximately 444 years of labor, not counting all the needles.

From FMNN, to ward off flu or even the Bird Flu in MORE VITAMIN C RECOMMENDED health expert Sepp Hasslberger

recommends simple measures “like washing our hands, getting enough rest, eating well, and above all stocking our system with … vitamin C.” This will, as he says, increase resistance to all the “invading” microbes, not only last year’s flu or this year’s hypothetical mutated bird flu virus.

But, how much Vitamin C should we take 500MG, 1000MG or more and doesn't it wash out of your system?

In Prepare for Avian Flu!, Jonathan Campbell, health consultant recommends

Begin increasing the amount of vitamin C that you take each day to very high levels, spread over the course of the day, in divided doses taken with meals. Start at 1000 mg per meal, and increase slowly to 2000-4000 mg per meal. (These are adult doses, modify by body weight for children.) Your optimal dose is just below the point where your body complains by giving you mild diarrhea. This is called the "bowel tolerance dose." Such doses are perfectly safe - vitamin C is natural to our bodies and needed for many body processes. Most people don't get nearly enough. Stock up on this vital nutrient - buy ascorbic acid in 1000 mg capsules or in powder form, 1-pound or 3-pound canisters. Mix powder with water or fruit juice. Be sure to take vitamin C with food that will coat your stomach to prevent stomach upset, such as organic soymilk, and to rinse your mouth afterwards to prevent mouth irritation or potential interaction with tooth enamel.

This is just part of a regimen that includes Lysine, high-potency multivitamin/multimineral tabs, lots of water, etc. Campbell has a "natural therapies" website. According to his site

Natural remedies concentrate vitamins, minerals, herbs, and other healing substances in the form of extracts, tablets, or capsules. Thus they flood the cells with nutrients that we normally receive from our food in much smaller quantities. These concentrated nutrients then provide the proper environment for healing to take place.

I thought Campbell had some good information on Vitamin C and dosages needed to fight off some diseases. I have not tried his therapies, but if bird flu becomes a pandemic, I will do what makes sense to stay alive and healthy. I don't make any money talking about Campbell or his site.

vitamin c bird flu mover mike

From My Way, Jump in suspected bird flu cases in people

Adding to the sense of alarm, researchers in Vietnam say the H5N1 avian flu virus has mutated allowing it to replicate more easily inside humans and other mammals. Taiwan said it had detected another bird flu strain that can infect people.

[...]

Perhaps just as worrying, Taiwan said on Monday it had found another highly pathogenic strain of avian flu, H7N3, in droppings left by a migratory bird and is carrying out tests to see if the virus has spread to nearby poultry farms.

Like H5N1, the H7N3 strain can infect humans, said an official at the Council of Agriculture.

Are we being overly dramatic about Bird Flu or are we in the fifth stage of a pandemic? The fifth stage moves under the surface, lulls us into complacency, before it explodes into the sixth and final stage.

H5N1 H7N3 bird flu mover mike

Kyodo News is reporting

Bird flu virus was found in pigs bred in China's Hunan Province, which means the virus could be a step closer to infecting human in a large scale, according to reports in Hong Kong on Thursday, while Vietnam reported the first human death from the A H3 strain of bird flu.

Ming Pao Daily News quoted an interview on China's Phoenix Satellite TV in which a deputy agricultural minister in Hunan admitted the bird flu virus had been found in pigs for the first time.
[...]
The provincial agricultural ministry later told Phoenix TV that the official who exposed the pig infections "made a mistake" and retracted what the official said.

bird flu H5N1 mover mike

From SacBee, Researchers seek help battling dog flu

Like people, dogs with the flu develop runny noses, sneezes, coughs and fever. And, as with the human flu, the illness can be mild, moderate, severe and even lethal. The mortality rate so far has been low, about 5 percent to 8 percent.
[...]
Ruben Donis, a flu geneticist at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who collaborated on the research, said this is the first known instance in 100 years of research that a flu strain has became established in a completely new species.

Most of the people that have contracted bird flu have been in close contact with chickens or poultry. There is less concern in the US about getting bird flu, however people live in close contact with their dogs, so it would be worrisome.

What health officials fear is that the virus may evolve to spread from person to person, potentially causing a global epidemic, because it would be a new strain in humans to which they have not developed immunity.

bird flu dog flu

From the NYT, Bush Plan Shows U.S. Is Not Ready for Deadly Flu by GARDINER HARRIS,

A plan developed by the Bush administration to deal with any possible outbreak of pandemic flu shows that the United States is woefully unprepared for what could become the worst disaster in the nation's history.

When, not if, a pandemic strikes, the US, hospitals would be overwhelmed, there could be riots at vaccination centers, and power and food supplies could be disrupted. We have seen that on a small scale with the disruption of the Port of New Orleans.

The Pandemic Influenza Strategic Plan (or PIS Plan for short)

outlines a worst-case scenario in which more than 1.9 million Americans would die and 8.5 million would be hospitalized with costs exceeding $450 billion.

The plan doesn't tell how the military would be deployed, but I suspect they would be used to enforce quarantines.

Health and Human Services Secretary Michael O. Leavitt said that flu planning would soon become a national exercise.

"It will require school districts to have a plan on how they will deal with school opening and closing," he said. "It will require the mayor to have a plan on whether or not they're going to ask the theaters not to have a movie."

"Over the next couple of months you will see a great deal of activity asking metropolitan areas, 'Are you ready?' If not, here is what must be done," he said.

bird flu H5N1 Pandemic

The WSJ reports

Two teams of scientists reported (today in the journals Nature and Science) that they re-created the influenza virus that killed as many as 50 million people in 1918 and 1919. The findings suggest that the threat of an avian-flu pandemic might be greater than previously thought. (emphasis added)

Researchers from the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Mount Sinai School of Medicine said that the historic, killer flu-bug strain probably originated as an avian bug and then spread in humans without undergoing complicated changes that many experts had thought necessary for a human pandemic.

H5NN1 bird flu pandemic

Check out Maxedoutmama! She has a rundown of the latest news about H5N1 - Bird Flu. She points to Recombinomics. In one of his latest news updates he says:

The clustering of cases is cause for concern.
[...]
These growing clusters, and clusters of clusters, signal a pandemic phase 5, which is getting close to the final phase 6.

What are the last three phases of a pandemic?

Phase 3. Human infection(s) with a new subtype, but no human-to-human spread, or at most rare instances of spread to a close contact. Goal of health organizations: Ensure rapid characterization of the new virus subtype and early detection, notification, and response to additional cases.

Phase 4. Small cluster(s) with limited human-to-human transmission but spread is highly localized, suggesting that the virus is not well adapted to humans. Goal of health organizations: Contain the new virus within limited foci or delay spread to gain time to implement preparedness measures, including vaccine development.

Phase 5. Larger cluster(s) but human-tohuman spread still localized, suggesting that the virus is becoming increasingly better adapted to humans, but may not yet be fully transmissible (substantial pandemic risk). Goal of health organizations:Maximize efforts to contain or delay spread, to possibly avert a pandemic and to gain time to implement pandemic response measures.

Phase 6. Pandemic: increased and sustained transmission in the general population. Goal of health organizations: Minimize the impact of the pandemic!

H5N1 Bird Flu News and Politics

Check out Maxedoutmama's Indonesian Bird Flu (H5N1) Update 2! It appears that there may be human to human spreading and that H5N1 is spreading throughout Indonnesia.

Bird Flu H5N1

After so much heavy news, time for something different. From the Manchester Evening News, Lemons 'can stop the spread of HIV' Prof. Roger Short, a leading academic in sexual health says

"When I spoke at an annual lecture in her (Marie Stopes, who set up the UK's first family planning clinic in 1918) honour in 1995 I was astounded to find that in those days lemon was a common contraceptive. Then in 2001 I found the acidity kills HIV, and could be developed into a microbicide.
[...]
During his research Prof Short has visited the city of Jos in Nigeria, where prostitutes routinely use lemons both as a contraceptive and to ward off sexual transmitted disease.
[...]
He now plans to try out the theory at a family planning clinic in Thailand, where he has convinced more than 100 people not infected with HIV to have unprotected sex with their partners to test the contraceptive qualities of the fruit.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if a little tart could kill the AIDs virus!AIDs

From the News.Telegraph, Breast cancer more likely in left-handers

Women who are left-handed are more than twice as likely to contract breast cancer before the menopause as right-handed women, research has found.

Scientists believe the cause may lie in the exposure to high levels of sex hormones before birth which can induce left-handedness as well as changes in breast tissue.

From the SeattlePI, U.S. buys $100 million of bird flu vaccine

Simple math suggests that means the $100 million purchase could provide enough doses to protect anywhere from 1.7 million people - "we're quite sure it's going to be a lot more than that," (Sanofi-Pasteur spokesman Len)Lavenda said - to a maximum of 20 million people

Recombinomics has a report of a family pig in China that died and in 20 minutes as the family buried the dead pig, many in the family also fell ill or died.

Are we at more risk today from a Flu Pandemic than the last time we had a major outbreak in 1968? From the New England Journal of Medicine in May of 2005 in an article Preparing for the Next Pandemic by Michael T. Osterholm, Ph.D., M.P.H.:

It is sobering to realize that in 1968, when the most recent influenza pandemic occurred, the virus emerged in a China that had a human population of 790 million, a pig population of 5.2 million, and a poultry population of 12.3 million; today, these populations number 1.3 billion, 508 million, and 13 billion (emphasis added), respectively. Similar changes have occurred in the human and animal populations of other Asian countries, creating an incredible mixing vessel for viruses. Given this reality, as well as the exponential growth in foreign travel during the past 50 years, we must accept that a pandemic is coming — although whether it will be caused by H5N1 or by another novel strain remains to be seen.

It makes it easier with the large numbers of pigs and birds for something bad to happen as Recombinomics has been reporting on for some time. Don't forget Hyscience. The first source for me of in depth Bird Flu news was Hyscience.

Update:

From FrontPage Magazine Illegals: TB Delivery Systems

A multidrug-resistant tuberculosis known as MDR-TB is persistent in California, primarily among its "foreign-born" population, and has serious financial implications for the state's public-health system, federal and state health officials said yesterday.

"Treatment for MDR-TB is very expensive -- ranging from $200,000 to $1.2 million per person, over an 18- to 24-month time period," said Dr. Reuben Granich, a lead investigator for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, during a press conference in the District yesterday.

My eyes bugged when I read $200,000 to $1.2 Million per person!

Maxedoutmama does incredible research! In Bird Flu Found In Wild Geese (China) she keeps us informed about the progress of Avian flu and cites Recombinomics. There are a number of us that are very interested in this subject, Maxedoutmama is one of those.

The latest outbreak of avian flu was discovered after tests on 178 wild geese found dead on May 4 in the western Qinghai province. The bodies of the birds were on the shore of a vast lake in the province that borders Tibet and is a favourite migration pitstop.

When I saw the Motorcycle Diaries, I wondered how Che Guevera could be in contact with people in the Leper colony and not get the disease. I had only fears of the disease based on faulty knowledge. This evening I see in WND, Are illegals making U.S. a leper colony?, that it appears illegals are bringing leprosy into the US.

"For example, in 40 years, only 900 persons were afflicted by leprosy in the U.S.; in the past three years, more than 7,000 cases have been presented."

There is a link in the article to Leprosy from the American Leprosy Missions. Check out these questions and their answers:

Leprosy facts & myths

THE DISEASE
1.1 What is leprosy?
1.2 Why is leprosy also called Hansen's disease?
1.3 Is leprosy in the Bible the same as it is today?
1.4 How is it spread?
1.5 Is it inherited?
1.6 Can other people get leprosy from a patient?
1.7 Do household members need treatment?
1.8 What are the earliest signs of leprosy?
1.9 What about stories of fingers and toes dropping off?
1.10 What tests can be done to make the diagnosis?
1.11 How is it treated?
1.12 What side effects do the medications have?
1.13 What is a leprosy reaction?
1.14 Why are the medications continued if reactions occur?
1.15 How are reactions treated?
1.16 What happens to pregnant women who have leprosy?

PREVENTING DISABILITY
2.1 What happens to the eye in leprosy?
2.2 What type of nerve damage occurs?
2.3 What can be done to prevent disabilities?
2.4 What about footwear?

Dr. William Levis, head of the New York Hansen's Disease Clinic, told Columbia News Service.

"This is a real phenomenon. It's a public health threat. New York is endemic now, and nobody's noticed."

Levis thinks America could be on the verge of an epidemic.

Knowledge is power. Might as well know what we are up against.

From Canada.com, WHO report charts disturbing changes in avian flu virus, urges preparations

The report raises concerns that molecular and disease pattern evidence may indicate the virus is becoming more adept at infecting people. It also reveals some strains of the H5N1 virus may be developing resistance to oseltamivir, the drug wealthy nations are flocking to stockpile as fears of a pandemic mount.

An influenza expert who helped draft the report said it's meant to convey the message that the level of anxiety regarding the virus has risen.

Recombinomics has been chronicalling the developments in avian flu for some time. Hat tip to Free Republic.

Since Maxedoutmama pointed me to Recombinomics, I have been catching up about Marberg, and H5N1, H2N2, H9N2 (Bird Flues) and the human 1933 lab flu strain WSN/33. As near as I can tell, Recombinomics thinks WHO has a problem.

South Korea found WSN/33 in swine and deposited the samples in the GenBank. WHO has been trying to find out how the pigs got infected and then based on a small samples couldn't even find more WSN/33. What they did find in the swine samples were H9N2 or an avian bird flu.

This reservoir of H1N1 virus containing WSN/33 sequences poses a problem for both the swine and well as humans. Since the virus is a human virus from 1933, it should be readily transmissible in humans and those born after 1933 would have limited immunity. Since the swine isolates also have H9N2 genes, the various isolates could become endemic to the bird population and spread worldwide via migratory birds. As the virus continues to spread undetected (emphasis added), the potential for a bird flu pandemic increase.

The key word is undetected because WHO considered the matter closed after six months and may have reached a hasty conclusion.

Moreover, the finding of WSN/33 in swine in Korea suggests the pandemic in 2005 may be beginning on two fronts, with avian viruses becoming more human-like in Vietnam and human viruses becoming more avian-like in Korea. Unfortunately, both sets of viruses can infect birds which could create more mixing and matching of genetic information. This genetic instability could frustrate vaccine efforts based on the last 2004 isolates form Vietnam.

WHO says the samples at GenBank were contaminated and dismiss the President of Recombinomics, Niman, as a man who

has not published in the scientific literature since 1996 and is not a flu expert. WHO will not issue an official statement about the case, Klaus Stöhr, WHO's global influenza coordinator says: "We're not going to bother 6.5 billion people with something that's of no public health importance." Webster, too, says any publicity is too much: "It's so easy these days for somebody with a Web site to create a lot of panic."

I guess we will see who is correct, Recombinomics or WHO. I am no expert, however WHO sounds arrogant to me.